At the first AYE conference, some people commented that a
pre-conference tutorial, introducing some of this material, might be
useful not only to those who had not encountered it before, but also
to those who had. Since then, we have offered the "AYE Warm-Up"
to make it easier for everyone to participate from a shared
understanding of the basics. It is a big hit.

One thing that makes the AYE conference different is session
design. At many conferences, the basic format is one or two
presenters talking from the front of the room, to rows full of people
seated in chairs. While there might be some of that at this
conference, the emphasis is more on simulation and experience. We
believe that this approach can be especially effective for this kind
of learning, and we'll use it in this tutorial too. That means that
you'll have a chance to participate in the session, determining what
happens to a very great extent, and having a lot of fun doing it.

We'll introduce the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and several
of the tools, techniques and concepts of Virginia Satir, possibly
including items from this menu: triads, the five freedoms, the
self-esteem tool kit, the communication stances, the change model,
the interaction model, safety, and feedback.

"Act" is a word with a number of meanings and
associations. There's the sense of performing a task ("let's act
on that now"); of presenting a show ("I acted in a local
theatre group); of putting on a facade ("he's trying to be
brave, but it's just an act"); of a role in an organization
("she's acting CEO"); of behaving appropriately ("just
act naturally") or inappropriately ("she's acting up").
Acting gives us a chance to see things from another perspective, to
put on a new identity, and to take it off at will, and to explore
relationships and motivations of other people--and ourselves.

Improv theatre is acting without preparation, without a script,
and without a net; given a situation or an idea, improv challenges
you to create, develop, and participate in a new reality on the spot.
As such, it's a powerful means of learning, stimulating creativity,
and building empathy.

In this session, we'll scratch the surface of improvisational
theatre through a series of simple exercises and games. We'll take
advantage of the safety and security afforded by the AYE community,
so that people need not feel awkward or silly--unless it's part of
the act. Session attendees are strongly encouraged to participate or
simply to observe as their comfort level permits. Be prepared to drop
your usual pretenses, to put some new ones on, and to have a few
belly laughs along the way.

You’re a software developer. Pressured by customers, your
management has committed to an impossible release deadline, and the
sales people have sold new licenses for the product with features
that don’t yet exist. Your stock options could make you a
millionaire if the company does well. But will it? Can you and your
team win by skill alone?

Or maybe you’re the CEO, struggling to keep the company
afloat. The new product will determine the company’s fate, but
the project is woefully behind schedule and the quality is doubtful.
Success will depend on product quality and beating the competition to
market. Will your development team pull off a heroic coup and save
the company, or will they turn out a product that’s full of
bugs? What can you do to assure they succeed?

Playing the Software Development Game will involve role-playing,
teamwork, competition, and life-like interactions between skill and
luck. It’s intended to be an entertaining way to experience the
effects of general systems thinking, as we play through positive or
negative feedback loops, and attempt interventions.

We will explore the situation in which a product is designed and
built to solve a problem. Parts of the product work as designed while
other parts are defective. To improve the quality of the product, the
defects must be removed, but if you spend too much time removing
defects, your product will have little value in the market. You will
be a member of a team whose job is to get a clean product to market
quickly in order to beat your competition.

Learning Objectives

Experience how teams make
tradeoffs

Contrast different approaches to
making tradeoffs

Formulate strategies for changing
traditional approaches

Experience the interplay of logic and emotion in making
tradeoff decisions

Complaints about poor communication between employees and upper
management is a typical problem for an organization. Employees
complain that upper management's communication is pure spin, which
leaves them dizzy and unsure about the organization's direction.
Upper management complain that employees whine to them about
difficult problems but offer neither a clear definition of the
problem; actionable recommendations for fixing the problem; nor an
explanation about why fixing the problem is more important than
fixing other problems.

People in organizations with these complaints are stuck in a
communication quagmire. How does does an employee release herself or
himself? By learning how to transform their communication into a
language that upper management hears and acts upon.

We will use both the Satir Interaction Model and Satir
Congruence Model to 1) analyze the interaction, 2) reveal
patterns, and 3) transform the communication to make it more
effective.

Join Steve to close the gap between the employee communication as
desired by upper management and as perceived.

Congruent communication is the primary change agent in the Satir
system. Accordingly, it is both a means and an end to quality in
relationships, performance, health, and spirituality. Congruent
communication arises from your personal and contextual system of
validation and esteem, and demonstrates that system to other people.
Virginia Satir wrote in The New Peoplemaking (p. 369-370):

"I wonder what would happen if suddenly during one night, all
five billion persons in the world learned the essentials of congruent
living:

To communicate clearly with
directness and honesty

To cooperate rather than compete

To empower rather than subjugate

To enhance individual uniqueness
rather than categorize

To use authority to guide and
accomplish 'what fits' rather than force compliance through the
tyranny of power

To love, value, and respect
themselves fully

To be personally and socially
responsible

To use problems as challenges and opportunities for creative
solutions

"I think we would wake up in a very different world, a world
in which peace is possible."

Participate in this session and learn how to approach congruence,
deal with incongruence, and convert incongruence to congruence.

Does the thought of giving presentations leave you cringing in
fear, with sweaty palms and a squeaky voice? Are you able to present,
but concerned that you can't communicate your ideas in a way that
holds people's interest? Do you lack confidence in your material?
Whatever your concerns, it's clear that your ability to deliver
high-quality presentations to management, clients, colleagues, and
others will help you advance in your career.

In this session, Johanna and Naomi, who have presented seminars
and keynotes internationally to audiences of all sizes, will offer
tips, techniques, and proven methods for improving your confidence
and competence as a speaker.

The process for creating a Diagram of Effects (DOE) helps you see
the dynamics of a system so you can design effective interventions to
solve a system problem or, at least, mitigate it. When a team uses
the diagramming process, it also helps members arrive at at a shared
view of the system, which simplifies reaching consensus about
interventions and provides the necessary logic for successfully
proposing change to upper management.

A DOE concisely illustrates to colleagues, who know the notation,
a particular aspect of a system. Jerry Weinberg uses DOEs throughout
his four volume Quality Software Management (QSM) series -- with
Volume 1, Systems Thinking, containing the most information about the
DOE process -- to illustrate software system dynamics and
interventions.

Learning to create a DOE is like learning to ride a bicycle.
Seeing a DOE diagrammed by someone else will teach you how to diagram
as effectively as seeing another person ride their bicycle will teach
you how to ride. Although reading about the diagramming process will
help prepare you, Don and Steve believe that direct experience with
the diagramming process is essential to learning how to create and
use DOEs.

You will receive direct experience during this session. You will
be a member of a team who creates a DOE that show the dynamics of a
system from the perspective of a problem; you and your teammates will
create interventions that solve or mitigate the problem; and you and
your teammates will share your work with other teams during several
phases of the process.

Learn a valuable tool for intervening to solve a problem. Please
join Don and Steve for a ride through the diagramming process.

S08.
Compensating for Distance: Strategies for Working in Distributed and
Virtual Teams

Esther Derby

Distributed teams seem to be here to stay. Through a simulaiton
and discussion, we'll explore the challenges of working on a
distributed team and look for strategies to compensate.

The introvert/extrovert dynamic is complex. Introverts and
extroverts exhibit significant differences in behavior, interaction
preferences and work style. They differ in what, when, and how they
communicate. Such differences often lead to frayed nerves and ruffled
feathers. Worse, they can create misunderstandings, reduced
productivity and flawed results.

This session is for everyone who would like to learn how to work
effectively with their more introverted or extroverted colleagues.
We'll take both a serious and a light-hearted look at the
introvert/extrovert dynamic, so as to:

broaden the understanding each has
of the other

dispel misconceptions and
stereotypes

understand the positive and
negative perceptions each has of the other

I recently spoke with a colleague who was distressed that her
office mate picked his nose throughout the day. "Have you told
him his habit distresses you?" I asked. "No, I didn't want
to hurt his feelings," she said. "I just avoid him as much
as I can."

Even if you've never been in this exact situation, chances are
you've been in a similar one--one where a co-worker was doing
something that made it hard for you to work with him or her.

In this session we'll explore and practice the art of giving and
receiving feedback peer-to-peer.

We'll learn some helpful guidelines about giving feedback and then
practice giving and receiving feedback.

Great management happens one interaction at a time. Many of those
interactions happen behind closed doors – in one-to-one
meetings. So if great management happens in private, how do people
learn how to be great managers?

Great managers consistently apply a handful of simple--but not
necessarily easy-- practices. In this session (based on their book
Managment Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management),
management coaches Johanna and Esther will reveal management
practices we (and our clients) have found useful, and explain how to
perform them.

Note: This session is related to, but not the same as Johanna and
Esther's new workshop: Behind Closed Doors: Managing One-on-One. For
that workshop, see ManagingOneonOneWorkshop.

Learning objectives:

How to conduct an effective
one-on-one meeting to learn status, develop capability, and uncover
obstacles.

Multi-tasking, whether it's the PM's multi-tasking or the project
staff, or both--is a huge drain on projects. In my experience,
multi-tasking can prevent an otherwise reasonably planned and
executed project from completing. But in the face of too few people
and not enough time, what can you do?

In this session, we'll experience some multi-tasking, and discuss
and practice techniques to deal with senior management, the project
team, and ourselves.

Learning objectives:

recognizing individual
multi-tasking and choosing when to take action

recognizing your multi-tasking

techniques to discuss the problems
of multi-tasking with senior management

organizing the work in the face of too much to do, not enough
time, and too few people.

Do you ever wonder what to do next? You're not ready for a coach,
but you'd like some guidance on how to reinvent yourself and your
career? Join us in exploring what you've particularly enjoyed in your
career, what you haven't, and creating an action plan to move from
where you are to where you'd like to be.

Our survival rules and rules about commenting are central to the
way we participate in interactions. Rules are not to be thought of as
bad; on the contrary, we should honor our rules for helping us to
survive this long in a difficult world. Then we can acknowledge that
our rules may need to be updated to fit the changing world--what was
good for us at age four may not fit perfectly at age forty.

By transforming a rule into a guide, we keep the old possibility
and add a few new ones. For instance, take the common rule, I must
always do a perfect job. Analytically, we can see that this is
impossible, but emotionally we may keep trying to be perfect all the
time. When the rule is transformed, we can try to be perfect some of
the time, when it is appropriate, and be free to settle for good
enough when that is more fitting.

In this session, we'll demonstrate the technique for transforming
a rule into a guide, while giving each participant a chance to
surface some rules to be transformed.

All of us are learners seeking to be more effective. Sometimes we
need help. It can and has come to us from various directions:
parents, friends, partners, clergy, therapists, consultants,
supervisors, teachers, mentors, managers, owners, coaches etc. The
form and quality of help available is equally wide ranging.

Jean McLendon, coach, friend, mentor, consultant, to many of the
AYE community, has over 30 years of professional experience in
helping people deal with change, conflict, and connection. Utilizing
the methods and models of Virginia Satir, she explores both the inner
and outer dynamics of her client's challenges. This session allows
individuals, partnerships and teams an opportunity to seek Jean's
guidance.

The pressure is on, and you're stuck. In some alternate universe,
you have options. But in this world, at this moment, your mind is
blank. Where did the ideas go? How can you get them back?

In this session we'll develop and practice techniques for luring
our creative muse out of hiding.

S20. Building
a Strong Foundation of Trust, Respect, and Understanding

Naomi Karten

Why can't we all just get along? If only it were that easy. But we
stand a much better chance of getting along -- and successfully
working together -- if we build a foundation of trust, respect and
understanding. A strong foundation makes it easier to persist and
triumph amid uncertainties, complexities, and changing priorities.
Although some amount of conflict is to be expected in any
relationship, conflict is more likely to occur and more difficult to
resolve in the absence of that foundation. Difficult as it is to
believe when deadlines loom large and the ticking of the clock sounds
like a jackhammer, developing a foundation takes far less time than
repairing relationships damaged by its absence.

In this session, we'll explore the notion of a strong foundation
and we'll compare views on what that foundation entails. We'll
examine when to build a foundation and how to go about building it
(as well as how not to). We'll use simulations and group activities
to gain experience with techniques that can help to build a strong
foundation.

Good testing depends on setting the context in which it's
happening. It also depends on heuristics--fallible methods for
solving problems--and oracles--principles or mechanisms by which we
recognize problems. All oracles are heuristic; no principle or
mechanism can guarantee that something is perfect--only that it may
satisfy certain requirements for certain people in certain
circumstances.

In this session, we'll pose some apparently simple puzzles and
problems that exercise critical thinking, systems thinking, and
context-driven thinking skills. While this session isn't strictly
about software testing, those involved with testing and requirements
are the intended audience

Do you ever get stuck trying to put words on paper? Would you like
writing to be more fun and less drudgery? Could your writing benefit
by becoming livelier? Would you like to know some of the tricks and
techniques used by experienced writers? Have you thought about
writing as a way to build credibility and create name recognition?
Whether you're interested in becoming more skilled in writing memos,
reports, articles, books -- or email messages -- you'll get lots of
tips, coaching and practice in this workshop given by wordmeisters
Naomi and Johanna.

This workshop will offer ideas on what constitutes good writing,
how to get past writer's block, techniques for critiquing your own
writing, traps to avoid, editing do's and don'ts, ways to get the
ideas to flow, and more. Whether you have yet to write your first
complete sentence, or you are an experienced writer who wants to
become better at critiquing your own work, this writing workshop is
for you. Writing activities will be included, so bring paper, pen --
and your questions. Come prepared to take your writing to the next
level.

Change agents strive to move a system (person, team, company) from
the current reality to a future reality. The path between realities
contains multiple opportunities to derail the change effort;
over-sights or mis-steps on the change agent's part, lack of (or
dwindling) management support, the natural resistance of systems to
change.

What rules of thumb exist to help us with our change efforts? How
do we mix and match old and new realities? What might work? What
definitely won't? During this session, we will explore these
questions and more about how to initiate and lead change. .

You are a change artist, creative, intelligent and insightful.
Part of your job is to improve your organization. You identify a
need, envision an improvement, and make your proposal.

Someone to your right says, "But we tried that before, and it
didn't work." Someone to the left says, "But we've never
done that before." Right in front of you, a third person says,
"But that's no different from what we're doing now." From
the background, you hear a rising chorus of, "But we don't have
time!"

You're getting resistance. Now what do you do?

In this session, we will explore an approach that works: Crank up
your curiosity and empathy!

Whatever else it may be, resistance is information--information
about the values and beliefs of the people you are asking to change,
about the organization, about the change you are proposing, and about
yourself as a change agent.

This session is about how to turn resistance from a frustration
into a resource. You will learn and create new ways to interpret
people's responses as valuable information, and new ways to translate
that information into effective action to move forward with change.

Do you want more power at work? Less power? Better power? Do you
want to use your power more wisely and effectively?

Power can be one of the most fascinating and frustrating aspects
in our working lives. In this session, we will identify what power
is, and some of the forms it takes in people, relationships, and
organizations. We will explore often-overlooked sources of power that
are readily available to us, and learn how to connect with those
sources to empower ourselves and others. We will identify and
practice ways to use our power wisely, to serve our highest needs,
the needs of other people, and the needs of the organization and the
world around us.

Contributed Sessions

In our working lives, we are constantly being interrupted: by
noise, e-mails, phone calls, people stopping by to consult or simply
to engage in interaction. At our desks, we may find it difficult to
concentrate and be productive, particularly as we increasingly
attempt to multi-task. In meetings, we may not be fully present and
able to take in information or contribute optimally. Some
"distractions" may in fact be aids to concentration - for
some people. Others are just plain distractions.

In this session we will explore concentration and distraction,
with the aim of helping participants identify what helps them to
concentrate and what is distracting for them. We'll look at
differences in learning styles, at "flow", and at the
interaction of movement with concentration and learning. We'll also
experiment with potential distractions and concentration aids, and
have fun trying some physical exercises designed to enhance focus.

We are all familiar with optical illusions: we see something that
turns out to be not as it first appears. Isn't it strange that some
part of our mind knows that another part of our mind is being
deceived?

However, we are subject to self-deception in technical areas as
well: these are cognitive illusions. This workshop explores some of
the ways in which we deceive ourselves, why we do it, and what we can
do about it. A few examples will be given to illustrate what we are
looking for. Other examples will be sought from participants.

Small groups will discuss their experiences of cognitive
illusions: - when we have seen someone else who appeared to be
deceiving themselves - when we have experienced self-deception,
and how we became aware of it - what are the effects of
self-deception on other people and on the self-deceiver?

After
sharing from each group, we will discuss: - what are the reasons
behind self-deception (e.g. what kind of anxiety) - how can we
help people who are deceiving themselves? - how can we become
more aware of our own “blind spots”

Maybe you write programs, maybe you’re a tester, or maybe
you’re a management consultant. Whatever your specialty, you’re
in the business of selling your experience, your vision. Your ability
to get people places they’ve never been before. But what do you
actually do?

You create powerful conversations.

There’s only one way to sell ideas and vision –
through conversation. Sales conversations generate new possibilities.
Negotiations produce agreements and alignment. Conversation is the
medium through which people achieve cooperation and deliver results.

But many conversations have the opposite effect – they
stifle the opportunities they seek to create. The message of many
change initiatives is “Something is wrong with you and we’re
here to fix it.” When you approach people with the intent to
change them, you put people on the defensive. That’s a lousy
way to start a conversation.

How do you create powerful conversations that create value? By
paying attention to the ingredients of a successful interaction.
That’s what we’ll explore in this workshop.

You will leave this session inspired and prepared to start a
powerful conversation that’s waiting to happen in your life.

Using a word game and retrospectives we will examine some of the
ways size, feedback, and communication effect how people work (or
stop working) together in teams, as well as how teams work (or don't)
with each other.